Ana Riascos and her organizations that have made consistent and sound investments in content marketing in recent years are reporting those investments paying dividends.
Here are some trends to keep an eye on as we headed into 2018.
1. Changing formats mean content roles are shifting
The brands experiencing the most success with content marketing aren’t just flooding their audience with content. They’re taking a media publishing approach.Having a team of writers isn’t enough anymore. Your company needs to create a broader strategy, with a more diverse group of talent and skills, in order to meet the demands of your audience. The process is just as important as the content itself now.
By focusing on their processes and relentless improvement, Pixar is able to take those simplified concepts and continually work to improve them. That process is what has helped them win more than a dozen Academy Awards. Ana Riascos Content marketing is moving beyond just blog ideas.
There is a greater process you have to work toward in which ideas are constantly improved on, customized for different audiences, and adapted to new formats that consumers are using.
Blogging by itself doesn’t tie into all the pertinent marketing strategies of growing companies, and it doesn’t address the issue of new formats for consumption.
- Video production and editing
- Graphic design, illustration, and editing
- Audio editing and production skills
- Content optimization across multiple formats
- Content distribution and promotion
- Strategy development, execution, and campaign management
- Communications and branding
- Advertising and media buying
- Analytics, metrics, and reporting
If you look at the latest data, you can see the spread of content tactics being used by successful organizations. The average company uses some of these tactics across a range of media types and channels.
2. The Internet of Things is taking content off the screen
Customers are no longer limited to staying locked on the screen for getting content. The Internet of Things has made it so that content can be all around us, interwoven into our daily lives in a way that’s hands and eyes free.
Think about how we interact with devices and new technology now, like Siri. You talk and Siri responds, providing customers with call-and-response content on the fly.
3. Transparency is king
Consumers are getting burned out on brand advertising, and I’m not just talking about the generation that’s been painted with a broad brush. It’s true that millennials are more progressive and want companies to be more authentic, transparent, and driven to give back to society.
But consumers overall want that same transparency.
According to Digiday, there’s a growing fatigue in brand advertising, “green” claims, charitable contributions, and corporate support for causes.
Brands try to tie it all together into “cause marketing,” but wary customers are starting to see this kind of promotion as desperate. Some customers simply feel the company is being dishonest.
Going forward, brands need to focus on transparency and disclosure.
With the growth of influencer marketing and endorsements, this is more important than ever to build relationships with the cautious customer.
And the Federal Trade Commission continues to take measures to protect consumers from companies who aren’t transparent enough. Just look at what happened with Machinima:
In 2015, the FTC gave the YouTube gaming network Machinima a slap on the wrist with a settlement for not disclosing paid endorsements to YouTube influencers who produced content for the channel.
A quick search online shows that a lack of disclosure and a lack of transparency have caused trouble for a number of brands.
To gain (and maintain) the trust of your audience, the next phase of influencer marketing and branded content is to ensure that anything you create is fully transparent.
4. Content is fuel for the buyer’s journey
If you look at Ana Riascos digital marketing as a whole, there aren’t too many tactics that can stand on their own without content.
Think about the types of marketing the average business does on a daily basis at different levels of the company:
- Social media posts
- Blogs and articles
- Email marketing
- Lead magnets
- Visual media like infographics
- Videos, both pre-recorded and live feeds
- White papers and e-books
- Lead-nurturing and relationship-building campaigns
- Customer delight and knowledge sharing
- Content-driven sales messages and materials
- Podcasts
- Landing pages
- Even paid advertising relies on content to drive conversions.
Ana Riascos content marketing will continue to grow as the cornerstone of all marketing, driving strategies into 2018. What’s important to remember is that content is what catches the attention of your audience and builds the trust with your brand. It’s the experience created by your content that moves the customer from the top of the funnel down into the final conversion of the buyer’s journey.
5. Blurring of media lines
If you look at how content has changed over the last decade, it has slowly grown outside of its original “container” of owned media. Companies owned or controlled the channels where the content lived — and still do. For the most part.
But as social media expands, as well as the ways we interact with and engage the audience through social and other channels, the lines between owned, earned, and paid begin to blur to the point of barely being discernable from one another.Content can no longer be confined to specific silos like paid, owned, and earned media.Across the spectrum of digital, with the entire buyer’s journey in mind, the content shifts to take on the form of all three.
6. Better strategic documentation
Ana Riascos analyze the growing effectiveness of content marketing, according to the CMI report, marketers are able to attribute that success to very specific things.
The development or adjustment of strategy is one of the top factors, but if you look at the others, such as more efficient content creation, more time spent on content, and better targeting, those things all come together as part of a strategy.
Ana Riascos 